Game details

Ten minutes into Dishonored:Death of the Outsider, I thought it was a slick standalone addition with smart mechanical improvements over its predecessor. An hour later, it was already my favorite Dishonored title to date.

That praise isn’t quite as effusive as it might sound. I've never gelled well with Dishonored’s joyless world. If there's a character you're not encouraged to torture or kill in a Dishonored game, it's because that character only exists to tell you how much worse off the steampunk world is elsewhere. Meanwhile, the assassination-centric plots are too focused on revenge to bother righting any of the endless societal wrongs.

In Death of the Outsider, somebody finally feels like doing something to fix... well, everything. That somebody is Billie Lurk, a major antagonist from the first game's DLC duology and major accomplice in Dishonored 2. After meeting up with her former mentor, Daud, the two hatch a plan to kill the one ultimately responsible for their planet's often supernatural ills.

Make a difference

True to its name, that “ultimate source of all evil” is the demigod of chaos called the Outsider. Since the Outsider is the one who usually bestows magical powers on people, Billie is denied most of the supernatural arsenal that other series protagonists have enjoyed. She does have a few tricks, however, and what her powers lack in quantity they make up for in quality and mechanical improvements.

Billie can "blink" around her environments, just like Corvo and Emily from the main games, but her method of teleportation isn't instant. She instead summons markers that she can "displace" to at any time, so long as the player maintains line of sight. Placing Billie-shaped waypoints at your destination removes any uncertainty from the move and also opens up a whole host of new stealth and murder tactics. I've always loved to play death-from-above on unsuspecting guards, for instance, but Death of the Outsider lets me prepare instant escape routes back to my chosen perch before every drop assassination.

Billie's two other spells offer more fundamental changes to the series. "Semblance" lets Billie siphon off living NPCs' faces and wear them herself. It's great for Agent 47-brand stealth and nonviolent runs. "Foresight," meanwhile, is a play on Dishonored's Dark Vision, which highlights enemies and items through walls. The new ability freezes time while Billie astrally projects to scout ahead and mark points of interest. There’s no more need to play the entire game through a hazy, transparent orange peel for the sake of never missing something important!

Nonlethal takedowns are still an option in Death of the Outsider.

Story and clues are still teased out in text diaries.

Hey, it's that guy from Reservoir Dogs (AKA Daud).

Billie Lurk is not obliged to care about the rich and powerful.

Sucking people's faces off their heads is useful, but horrible.

Billie can ask rats for clues... Because magic.

Black Markets in most levels offer upgrades and items.

It's nice to finally see a Dishonored game without the constant haze of Dark Vision.

Billie doesn't have many magical skills, but the ones she has are good ones.

Contracts force you to really think about your approach.

Marking enemies with Foresight is just one of the game's fundamental improvements over Dishonored 2.

The rules of magic

Overall, there’s much less “fear of missing out” in the $30 expansion. Mana regenerates automatically and fully, for instance, so there's no reason to hold back because of limited mana potions. The "chaos system," which altered the previous games' story depending on how lethally you progressed, is either invisible or gone this time around. For the first time in a Dishonored game, you can choose to tackle any enemy in any way you please without fear of being judged by the game itself.

In fact, mixing up violent and nonviolent means is encouraged. Most of Death of the Outsider's five stages are speckled with optional contracts. These give orders to kill, steal, or kidnap specific targets without the benefit of objective markers. If you complete them to the letter, they're worth hefty chunks of change toward upgrades at black markets in each location.

Contracts are a much more open-ended excuse to explore your environment than hunting skill points and augments in Dishonored 2. Since the contracts don't directly point you to any of the objects or persons of interest, you need to pay a good deal more attention to context clues in your environment. Then you still have to figure out how to complete each job. That's not always easy when you need to, say, abduct a single VIP from a crowded bar that turns hostile if you act suspicious or make a mime's untimely death look like a suicide.

The end is the beginning

You can skip the contracts, of course, but here Death of the Outsider uses my craving to see and do everything as a force for good. The contracts drag me all across a given location and require me to think about every one of my tools, rather than encouraging me to play the game as a first-person chokehold simulator because I want to get the "best" ending.

Sadly, the contracts get less interesting as the game progresses, and they disappear altogether in the game’s final act. About halfway through, Death of the Outsider becomes less of a sandbox and more like its predecessors. In turn, I grew less and less enamored with it as I fell back on those old one-two combos on the branching path to a single target. I suppose you can't make something called "Death of the Outsider" without eventually narrowing the focus down to that singular figure. I only wish Arkane had addressed the elephant in the room by using more of the lessons the studio has clearly learned since Dishonored 2.

Said lessons still make the meat of the game feel more liberating than any other Dishonored. It's even fitting that Billie, who's quick to point out that she has suffered under her world's abusive pecking order more than most, is the one to finally loosen the series' reins—even while tying up the last of the games' major loose ends. That closure might indicate that Death of the Outsider is the last we've seen of Dishonored for a while. If so, my only regret is that we never saw more of what it offers.

The Good

Contracts encourage exploration and experimentation.

Superpowers are limited but some of the best in the series.

No morality system means no need to min-max lethal and non-lethal tactics.

The Bad

The sandbox features drop away near the end.

The Ugly

I can't help but wish Dishonored had been more like this all along.

Verdict: Dishonored: Death of the Outsider frees itself from the franchise's usual restrictions, while putting its usual tools to satisfying use. Buy it.

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52 Reader Comments

This game is a REALLY great lesson for game designers, and something that Shigeru Miyamoto talks about all the time as the key rule of game design: The game needs to be about rewards, and the best reward is fun. If you're game has a challenge. or a "thing", or is a 4x game with more thinking then "playing" ... this doesn't change. It can be annoying and difficult and frustrating to overcome a challenge in the game (like all the Mario levels that are only out in Japan) ... but the payoff at the end has to be "fun" as well as rewarding, and it has to be mathematically the same as if you had fun all along. For example, if you spend an hour trying to overcome a puzzle, the "reward" needs to be equal to one hour of having fun.

Dishonored has a lot of not fun in it. Powers you couldn't use, paths you couldn't take, styles you couldn't play because the games "thing" rewarded a very particular way of solving puzzle way more then another. The game wanted to be a unique thing, and to be that it had to soft force players to play ONE way. If you didn't, the reward for solving puzzles got reduced so the math was off. If you did, the challenge of the puzzle shot up so much the math was still off.

This game just let you have fun. And it's the best in the series because of it.

"If there's a character you're not encouraged to torture or kill in a Dishonored game, it's because that character only exists to tell you how much worse off the steampunk world is elsewhere. Meanwhile, the assassination-centric plots are too focused on revenge to bother righting any of the endless societal wrongs."

I think this is an unfair assessment of the games.

Largely speaking, the people you endeavor to exact revenge upon are a large part of the problem, and removing them has the potential to make things better for society at large. Whether or not that happens depends on how those people die.

If they're straight up murdered, then society gets worse because the power structures clamp down on the people. If the deaths lead to confessions, or are otherwise symbolic, then it undermines the legitimacy of the power structures and, eventually, leads to a more lasting a fair peace.

Also, there's, what, 5 or so assassination targets? Everyone else can be left alone.

And, really, the games have always been about revenge. Complaining that they're so self-focused is like complaining that hockey isn't basketball.

This game is a REALLY great lesson for game designers, and something that Shigeru Miyamoto talks about all the time as the key rule of game design: The game needs to be about rewards, and the best reward is fun. If you're game has a challenge. or a "thing", or is a 4x game with more thinking then "playing" ... this doesn't change. It can be annoying and difficult and frustrating to overcome a challenge in the game (like all the Mario levels that are only out in Japan) ... but the payoff at the end has to be "fun" as well as rewarding, and it has to be mathematically the same as if you had fun all along. For example, if you spend an hour trying to overcome a puzzle, the "reward" needs to be equal to one hour of having fun.

Dishonored has a lot of not fun in it. Powers you couldn't use, paths you couldn't take, styles you couldn't play because the games "thing" rewarded a very particular way of solving puzzle way more then another. The game wanted to be a unique thing, and to be that it had to soft force players to play ONE way. If you didn't, the reward for solving puzzles got reduced so the math was off. If you did, the challenge of the puzzle shot up so much the math was still off.

This game just let you have fun. And it's the best in the series because of it.

This is asserting that the low chaos ending is objectively the best, and that unhappy endings are somehow bad. I felt that the high chaos ending to the first Dishonored was much better than the low chaos ending. Haven't played the 2nd game yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if the high chaos ending is also solid, if not superior.

Will definitely pick this up shortly and looking forward to it, however I have to say I got a tremendous amount of satisfaction from playing these games through with zero kills. This was surprisingly hard to do in Dishonored 2 due to causing inadvertent deaths, but was immensely rewarding.

I probably spent too much time on the original Deus Ex, its in my DNA to be stealthy and non-lethal wherever possible.

I kind of wished there was a kind of faction mode in the second one. "I hate the religious nuts and will kill them on sight." So you would get rewards for killing them and punishments for betraying the gangs.

This game is a REALLY great lesson for game designers, and something that Shigeru Miyamoto talks about all the time as the key rule of game design: The game needs to be about rewards, and the best reward is fun. If you're game has a challenge. or a "thing", or is a 4x game with more thinking then "playing" ... this doesn't change. It can be annoying and difficult and frustrating to overcome a challenge in the game (like all the Mario levels that are only out in Japan) ... but the payoff at the end has to be "fun" as well as rewarding, and it has to be mathematically the same as if you had fun all along. For example, if you spend an hour trying to overcome a puzzle, the "reward" needs to be equal to one hour of having fun.

Dishonored has a lot of not fun in it. Powers you couldn't use, paths you couldn't take, styles you couldn't play because the games "thing" rewarded a very particular way of solving puzzle way more then another. The game wanted to be a unique thing, and to be that it had to soft force players to play ONE way. If you didn't, the reward for solving puzzles got reduced so the math was off. If you did, the challenge of the puzzle shot up so much the math was still off.

This game just let you have fun. And it's the best in the series because of it.

This is asserting that the low chaos ending is objectively the best, and that unhappy endings are somehow bad. I felt that the high chaos ending to the first Dishonored was much better than the low chaos ending. Haven't played the 2nd game yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if the high chaos ending is also solid, if not superior.

I agree, I think the story always leant itself towards a darker ending. With the second game, there seemed to be less difference between endings, and that's even more true here. DotO doesn't have an achievement for no kills, and doesn't even have an option for no powers.

I can understand why they did that - people felt they were being punished for violent playthroughs. But it's a shame we've lost out on seeing more of the consequences of our actions. One of my favourite Dishonored moments was reaching the end of my maximum chaos playthrough of the first game and seeing just how much of the ending gets cut when everyone involved is dead.

We've been trained to think of games as a challenge which, when overcome, unlocks the happy ending. I'd like to see more games embrace the dark side.

My favorite of the first cycle were the two Daud DLCs. I'm sick and tired of the blank-slate main character that you're supposed to identify with, e.g. Corvo, Freeman. Playing as Daud, I felt like I had real motivation: Duad knew he was going to go to hell and was fighting like... hell to avoid that.

This is an xpac for the second game, so you'd need at least that one anyway.

There's not a huge interconnect between the two games' plots, nor apparently this one's, but at least with the two earlier games playing the first IMO offers some background info for events and references in the second.

Unlike Steven, I found the other games to be entertaining and rewarding, especially if you like Splinter Cell or Alpha Protocol style games; figuring out the lowest-impact solutions to situations was entertaining, especially given the nonlinear level design and options offered by Corvo'd (and in 2, Emily's) supernatural abilities.

It's a turn of phrase that stylistically is generally associated with anti-establishment types (in particular anarchist/labor/socialist movements, "no god, no masters"). Bioshock might have been doing a clever co-opting of that by turning it into a capitalist maxim.

I'm confused - is this DLC for one of the two existing games, or is this a 3rd installment in the franchise?

"Half-price standalone expansion" is literally the first four words of the subtitle.

Sorry - missed that part, RSS reader doesn't show me the subheadings. But regardless - a "standalone expansion" still confuses me, either it's a standalone game, or an expansion to an existing game. I don't really get how it can be both.

Well, it's accurate, because that's what it is. It's an increasing trend to have stand-alone expansions to existing games - it means they can use the same engine as before, so there's no need to rebuild things from scratch. Just to name six, Naughty Dog did it with Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and Last Of Us: Left Behind, Sucker Punch did it with Infamous: Festival of Blood and Infamous: First Light, and Ubisoft's done it with Far Cry: Blood Dragon and Far Cry: Primal.

Making it stand-alone means their sales aren't just limited to purchasers of the original games, and it may serve as inducement to buy the originals if people hadn't bought it, took a chance on the expansion, and liked it.

I loved playing the first Dishonored but I haven't gotten around to the second yet. I recall there were PC issues on release, were those ever fixed? If so it'll definitely get more priority in my queue (plus this one) then.

I loved playing the first Dishonored but I haven't gotten around to the second yet. I recall there were PC issues on release, were those ever fixed? If so it'll definitely get more priority in my queue (plus this one) then.

I've played through Dishonored 2 several times on my PC, and I've had no real problems (apart from the occasional crash). I didn't like the story as well as the first one, but I really enjoyed the gameplay and all the options from the new powers.

It's a turn of phrase that stylistically is generally associated with anti-establishment types (in particular anarchist/labor/socialist movements, "no god, no masters"). Bioshock might have been doing a clever co-opting of that by turning it into a capitalist maxim.

Thanks!BioShock was the first thing I thought of with that quote + video games. =)

You know, I liked both Dishonored games, much as I loved the Mass Effect series, and the Bioshocks (except for Bio 1's override mini games), and Infamouses (except for that stupid repetitive Second Son).

So I will buy this today when I pick up a new SIM card for the iPhone 7+ (since the other was boinked in the iOS11 update). I do not know if the iPhone redo or the game will take a higher priority today.

But man, I wish I knew of some other games that are not Fantasy based that have the compelling Lone Wolf style of play these have for the PS4. My PS3 collection is so much larger but I have this PS4 too. . . . . .

I agree, I think the story always leant itself towards a darker ending. With the second game, there seemed to be less difference between endings, and that's even more true here. DotO doesn't have an achievement for no kills, and doesn't even have an option for no powers.

I can understand why they did that - people felt they were being punished for violent playthroughs. But it's a shame we've lost out on seeing more of the consequences of our actions. One of my favourite Dishonored moments was reaching the end of my maximum chaos playthrough of the first game and seeing just how much of the ending gets cut when everyone involved is dead.

We've been trained to think of games as a challenge which, when overcome, unlocks the happy ending. I'd like to see more games embrace the dark side.

Is it that we've been "trained" to think that way? Or is there a general or natural desire to be a hero in games that makes the world a better place somehow? (versus being bad for badness sake)

I'm looking forward to the day when the whole "moral ambiguity is cool" fad wears out. I know it's just a game but it seems to reflect this broader trend in books, movies, etc. that somehow being good and/or striving to do the right thing is a boring or lazy or unsophisticated way to portray characters.

I know that it is likely an unpopular opinion but I'm tired of the words "gritty and dark" being hailed as "complex and realistic" when it's just a faddish way to say self-absorbed anti-heroes doing crappy things because it's cool and reflects what real life is like. There are no real heroes, blah, blah, blah. Most the folks I meet in this world are good people (not perfect) striving to do good things (not always). So it seems to me reading/playing/watching real heroes trying to accomplish the amazingly good is more the real world and less an artificial 'training'.

(P.S. I know that goes way beyond the scope of what you were trying to say - and I'm not begrudging your desire for a better badder ending. This is just a general rant.)

Well, it's accurate, because that's what it is. It's an increasing trend to have stand-alone expansions to existing games - it means they can use the same engine as before, so there's no need to rebuild things from scratch. Just to name six, Naughty Dog did it with Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and Last Of Us: Left Behind, Sucker Punch did it with Infamous: Festival of Blood and Infamous: First Light, and Ubisoft's done it with Far Cry: Blood Dragon and Far Cry: Primal.

It's not exactly a new idea. id did it with Spear of Destiny and Doom II; LucasArts did it with Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith; and Valve did it with Half-Life: Blue Shift.

Well, it's accurate, because that's what it is. It's an increasing trend to have stand-alone expansions to existing games - it means they can use the same engine as before, so there's no need to rebuild things from scratch. Just to name six, Naughty Dog did it with Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and Last Of Us: Left Behind, Sucker Punch did it with Infamous: Festival of Blood and Infamous: First Light, and Ubisoft's done it with Far Cry: Blood Dragon and Far Cry: Primal.

It's not exactly a new idea. id did it with Spear of Destiny and Doom II; LucasArts did it with Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith; and Valve did it with Half-Life: Blue Shift.

Didn't Mysteries of the Sith require Jedi Knight to be installed already though? My memory on that is a little fuzzy so many years later (loved those games!).

And if you're going to go back into the 90s: Commander Keen 6 was a stand-alone game on the same engine that the packaged-together 4 & 5 was. =)

I kinda skipped most of the review, just read the beginning and end, because I just started Dishonored 2 and I didn't want any spoilers for it.

I will say that I found the two DLC's for Dishonored 1 were VERY important to the plot of Dishonored 2. After the first chapter of D2, I realized I was missing some key info, so I watched some run throughs of the DLC's.

I love the Dishonored world, and it feels like the spiritual successor of the Thief series. I will say that I'm not seeing any of the troubles a lot of others were seeing with the performance of D2. I have just about all the settings at max (other then things I turn off because they annoy me like motion blur or depth of field). I'm running at 1080p and I've got a solid 60FPS at that. Granted, I have a fairly robust system so YMMV.

After I finished D2, I have some other games I have to catch up on. I'll likely be picking up DotO when it goes on sale, not because I feel the need to save the money or that the game isn't worth $30, but because I can't deal with the distraction of having the game around right now. I'll never finish my back log...

But man, I wish I knew of some other games that are not Fantasy based that have the compelling Lone Wolf style of play these have for the PS4. My PS3 collection is so much larger but I have this PS4 too. . . . . .

You're speaking to my heart. I'd highly recommend the Deus Ex series (Human Revolution was on PS3 and Mankind Divided is on PS4). Great stealthy action gameplay. Prey (also by Arkane, although their American studio instead of their French one) has a ton of great stealth moments as well. And Metal Gear Solid V, naturally, is chock-full of stealthy action.

I agree, I think the story always leant itself towards a darker ending. With the second game, there seemed to be less difference between endings, and that's even more true here. DotO doesn't have an achievement for no kills, and doesn't even have an option for no powers.

I can understand why they did that - people felt they were being punished for violent playthroughs. But it's a shame we've lost out on seeing more of the consequences of our actions. One of my favourite Dishonored moments was reaching the end of my maximum chaos playthrough of the first game and seeing just how much of the ending gets cut when everyone involved is dead.

We've been trained to think of games as a challenge which, when overcome, unlocks the happy ending. I'd like to see more games embrace the dark side.

Is it that we've been "trained" to think that way? Or is there a general or natural desire to be a hero in games that makes the world a better place somehow? (versus being bad for badness sake)

I'm looking forward to the day when the whole "moral ambiguity is cool" fad wears out. I know it's just a game but it seems to reflect this broader trend in books, movies, etc. that somehow being good and/or striving to do the right thing is a boring or lazy or unsophisticated way to portray characters.

I know that it is likely an unpopular opinion but I'm tired of the words "gritty and dark" being hailed as "complex and realistic" when it's just a faddish way to say self-absorbed anti-heroes doing crappy things because it's cool and reflects what real life is like. There are no real heroes, blah, blah, blah. Most the folks I meet in this world are good people (not perfect) striving to do good things (not always). So it seems to me reading/playing/watching real heroes trying to accomplish the amazingly good is more the real world and less an artificial 'training'.

(P.S. I know that goes way beyond the scope of what you were trying to say - and I'm not begrudging your desire for a better badder ending. This is just a general rant.)

It's kind of a complicated answer.

I think, in gaming, the advent of "true" endings have been both a blessing and a curse. They're really a reward for grinding. And because of that, because of the extra work the player puts into the game to get that reward, there's an expectation that it's going to be some sort of happy ending/player-inserted wish fulfillment.

With Dishonored, a lot of players want to get the "good" ending, but are frustrated that they can't play the way they want to get it. Which is precisely the point. If you want to play as Corvo: Murder Bot, then you're perfectly free to do so. But it's asinine to demand that you get rewarded with the peaceful ending when nothing you've done in game was done towards a peaceful resolution. Players can't demand that a game world reacts to their actions, but then complain when those reactions illustrate the unintended consequences of those actions.

Regarding dark and brooding and moral ambiguity somehow equaling maturity, you're right, it doesn't automatically equal that. And I, too, am tired of this seemingly unending parade of "Humanity is the real monster" fiction we've endured for the last 10+ years. But, sometimes, it makes sense.

Spoilers for the first Dishonored:

In the first game, the city is in the grips of a plague, a plague which was brought to Dunwall as part of a conspiracy to discredit and eventually remove the Empress. Both the conspirators and those that conspire against them have dishonest motives.

The city is also gripped by extreme class stratification. The wealthy embrace the nihilism in which they live, throwing parties and reveling in their wealth while the poor suffer and die around them (the costume ball was a really great visual metaphor... the beast within peeking out for all to see). The poor, in their desperation, appeal to old powers and sacrifice in the hopes of somehow leveling the playing field.

High/low chaos isn't just a kill/stealth meter. It's a selfishness meter. It's a gauge of Corvo doing what's best for himself vs. what's best for the city. Yeah, you can straight up shiv everyone involved in the conspiracy. But that only satisfies Corvo's need for vengeance. Exposing the conspirators takes more work and thought, but Corvo's (the player's) sacrifice is the city's gain.

For me, the high chaos ending was more satisfying not because it was dark, but because it asserted that the city itself was poisoned long before the plague was introduced. That everything that happened just before and during the game was merely a symptom of a larger problem, and the fitting end stage of it all. It felt a bit like Dragon Age II, where no matter how powerful you get, it's hard to actually stop societal inertia.

But, that said, I didn't hate the low chaos ending.

So, yeah... everything I just wrote makes me shake my head at people, especially reviewers, who simply don't get it. The game is incredibly explicit about all of this. And, again, sometimes a "bad" ending is actually very fitting. I find that to be the case with the first Dishonored.

One thing that I found very interesting when I played the first Dishonoured was the non-lethal option to take down your target. In many games this would be the "good" option but here you were condemning someone to a fate much worse than death, sometimes horrifyingly so.

Well put. On the other hand, I got the low chaos ending not because I wanted it, but because that was the consequence of how I choose to play pretty much every game. In the end, I didn't have a lot of concern for making the world better or worse; I was just choosing to play the way I enjoy. If I have an option to not kill, and possibly skirt around every conflict, I'll always take that.

Not surprisingly, I don't get much out of most FPSes.

Someone earlier in the thread said the first game had a lot of "not fun" in it because there were things you couldn't do depending on previous choices, that the game was forcing people to play one particular way. Which is patently absurd - the beauty of Dishonored was that there were choices, but those choices had consequences. I don't begrudge a game for providing choices I don't want to take, so long as it has choices I do want to take.

Well, it's accurate, because that's what it is. It's an increasing trend to have stand-alone expansions to existing games - it means they can use the same engine as before, so there's no need to rebuild things from scratch. Just to name six, Naughty Dog did it with Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and Last Of Us: Left Behind, Sucker Punch did it with Infamous: Festival of Blood and Infamous: First Light, and Ubisoft's done it with Far Cry: Blood Dragon and Far Cry: Primal.

It's not exactly a new idea. id did it with Spear of Destiny and Doom II; LucasArts did it with Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith; and Valve did it with Half-Life: Blue Shift.

As those earlier examples show though, they didn't used to be called "standalone expansions." Rather, like Doom II, they were just sequels, or spin-offs like Wolf3D Spear of Destiny. id did it a few times with the Commander Keen series as well: well:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commander_Keen#Games

It wasn't until maybe Quake 2 that a sequel meant "new engine." The spin-offs needed a new name, and "standalone expansion" appears to have been adopted by many.

I loved playing the first Dishonored but I haven't gotten around to the second yet. I recall there were PC issues on release, were those ever fixed? If so it'll definitely get more priority in my queue (plus this one) then.

The second one is as good as the first. I had some stuttering after I first installed the game--maybe for a few weeks, and my GPUs were reaching 71 or 72 C with a fan profile of 80-percent fan speed at 69 C. No game ever did this before Dishonored 2. Mysteriously, the problems just disappeared, and the game runs fine, usually at 50-70 fps at an average GPU temp of 64 C.

But man, I wish I knew of some other games that are not Fantasy based that have the compelling Lone Wolf style of play these have for the PS4. My PS3 collection is so much larger but I have this PS4 too. . . . . .

You're speaking to my heart. I'd highly recommend the Deus Ex series (Human Revolution was on PS3 and Mankind Divided is on PS4). Great stealthy action gameplay. Prey (also by Arkane, although their American studio instead of their French one) has a ton of great stealth moments as well. And Metal Gear Solid V, naturally, is chock-full of stealthy action.

Well put. On the other hand, I got the low chaos ending not because I wanted it, but because that was the consequence of how I choose to play pretty much every game. In the end, I didn't have a lot of concern for making the world better or worse; I was just choosing to play the way I enjoy. If I have an option to not kill, and possibly skirt around every conflict, I'll always take that.

Not surprisingly, I don't get much out of most FPSes.

Someone earlier in the thread said the first game had a lot of "not fun" in it because there were things you couldn't do depending on previous choices, that the game was forcing people to play one particular way. Which is patently absurd - the beauty of Dishonored was that there were choices, but those choices had consequences. I don't begrudge a game for providing choices I don't want to take, so long as it has choices I do want to take.

Yeah. And in general, I find that nonlethal choices make things a little better in the long run. But, damn! I can't seem to play this game without finding myself in so much trouble that I have to kill to get away. Regardless, the game is much fun and full of choices.

One of the biggest problems I have with Dishonored's chaos system is that one has to do an entire playthrough of the game as a continuous thing to get the various endings AND achievements, and that makes the game feel far too "grindy" for me. I've never understood why a game like Dishonored doesn't make the Clean Hands (no kill) achievement requirement a checklist instead of a playthrough total. Instead of the requirement being "complete the game without killing anyone," make it, "play through each level at least once without killing anyone." That way, if MY Corvo wants to kill the High Overseer but not the Lord Regent (or vice versa), I can play MY version and not have to grind through the whole game again just to get the trophy.

There's lots of ways this could be addressed, but I think that making the post-first-playthrough game more of a "do what you want whenever you want and unlock stuff as you go" system would make the game more replayable and fun.

Huh... I'm pretty much in complete disagreement with this review. I loved both of the first 2 games, but this third installment in the series has left me feeling pretty disappointed. I really don't like the "Voltaic gun", and would much prefer to have the crossbow or pistol back instead. The changes they've made to the "Blink" power are also inferior, IMHO. The lack of overall powers you can get, compared to the first 2 games, is also a negative (again, IMO). It's not a terrible game by any means, but I find myself sorely disappointed with it when compared to the first 2, which I dearly loved.

The game plays and feels just different enough from the first 2, that I'm curious if it was developed by a different team. Haven't googled to see if that's the case or not, but it just feels so much more disappointing to me from the first 2 games, that it seems like something fairly drastic must have occurred with who made this game.

It's a turn of phrase that stylistically is generally associated with anti-establishment types (in particular anarchist/labor/socialist movements, "no god, no masters"). Bioshock might have been doing a clever co-opting of that by turning it into a capitalist maxim.

Arkane Studios also worked on Bioshock 2 and generally seems very inspired by Origin Systems/Looking Glass games. Hence the modified slogan, rather than straight-up using "no gods, no masters."

This game is a REALLY great lesson for game designers, and something that Shigeru Miyamoto talks about all the time as the key rule of game design: The game needs to be about rewards, and the best reward is fun. If you're game has a challenge. or a "thing", or is a 4x game with more thinking then "playing" ... this doesn't change. It can be annoying and difficult and frustrating to overcome a challenge in the game (like all the Mario levels that are only out in Japan) ... but the payoff at the end has to be "fun" as well as rewarding, and it has to be mathematically the same as if you had fun all along. For example, if you spend an hour trying to overcome a puzzle, the "reward" needs to be equal to one hour of having fun.

Dishonored has a lot of not fun in it. Powers you couldn't use, paths you couldn't take, styles you couldn't play because the games "thing" rewarded a very particular way of solving puzzle way more then another. The game wanted to be a unique thing, and to be that it had to soft force players to play ONE way. If you didn't, the reward for solving puzzles got reduced so the math was off. If you did, the challenge of the puzzle shot up so much the math was still off.

This game just let you have fun. And it's the best in the series because of it.

This is asserting that the low chaos ending is objectively the best, and that unhappy endings are somehow bad. I felt that the high chaos ending to the first Dishonored was much better than the low chaos ending. Haven't played the 2nd game yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if the high chaos ending is also solid, if not superior.

It's really not.

As you play the game can do thing, you get points. and achievements. Things like staying unseen and not killing get you more points then killing everyone. The games "best" achievement is earned by not killing anyone and never being seen on a mission. By the only quantifiable measure the game gives you, you are BETTER at the game if you play it one way, and WORSE if you play it another way.

The gratification that comes from being the best at something is a key motivator in video games. If you're just making your own fun by enjoying killing everyone, or people (like me!) that play runs with contrived rules (like no death, can't stop running, ect) ... then the game doesn't need to make fun for you. But you're the exception, not the norm.

you can choose to tackle any enemy in any way you please without fear of being judged by the game itself

This makes me feel you sort-of missed the point of the chaos system. One of the delights of the first two games was playing through twice to see the subtle changes caused by altering the chaos. One of the most poignant moments in Dishonored 2 was coming across an officer and her lover who had been plotting a way to escape the decaying society in the low-chaos run. Under high chaos the officer was disgusted that her partner had failed to steal enough to fund their getaway and killed her. Ouch.